Urban Morphology and Energy Efficiency Practice: the urban pattern analysis as framework for impact evaluation of Biomass Production towards Energy Efficient Districts

The promotion of worldwide practices in order to adopt successful Renewable Energy and Sustainability measures in Cities, is a central topic among public authorities, citizens and designers. Whereas Renewable Energy Sources can be usually applied in non-urban context diffusely, the challenge is to host renewable technologies inside the existing urban areas. Indeed each district has its own form and pattern so to implicate the success or the failure of a RES application. In RES scenario district cogeneration through biomass is not exploited yet for its full potential. This work tries to identify physical variables and limitations in urban city patterns to offer a practical instrument for authorities, citizens and designers in order to better determine the biomass exploitation potential, understanding if an urban area is more conducive to on-site production than others. The identification of these variables and their application in an estimate tool want to contribute in the promotion of energy efficiency strategies able to take advantage of the in-site characteristics of a district. The aim is double: testing the biomass potential in an existing urban area and achieving to designers and urban planners to measure the energy performance of biomass application in their projects during the design process understanding the effects of patterns' variables and their interactions across the whole system. Despite the biomass production in urban area is mainly related to population density, the work shows how some variables as the green area or the building ratio have to be considered for a more detailed analyze. As a consequence of the research, there is a relation which emerges between urban patterns and biomass dependent on different urban variable characteristics with a strict relation among urban forms, City and biomass.